looking for a way to safely remove usb drives... QUICKLY? here's the USB DISK EJECTOR for you! it's a small utility that does the same thing as the Windows "Safely Remove Device" applet, except that it does it quicker and better. there is no installation required, it's flexible (can run BOTH via command line, and GUI), it's portable, and most importantly, it's a freeware!

SCREENSHOT:


other advantages of the USB Disk Ejector over the Windows "Safely Remove Hardware" feature:
* not as confusing to use, particularly if you have several USB devices. the USB disk ejector program flashes up a simple screen (see screenshot above) that allows you to select the device to eject. one click and you are done.
* the Windows "Safely Remove Hardware" icon often goes missing from the system tray. being portable, the best place for USB Disk Ejector is on your USB drive. just put it in the root directory or, better still, if you have a menu system on your USB drive, put it there. you'll always know where to find it.

MORE INFO + DOWNLOAD:
http://quick.mixnmojo.com/usb-disk-ejector

this is just an alternative, guys and girls. if you want to stick with what windows has for you, as it is, so be it.

What happens if you don't 'eject' or stop the USB first?

some of the data you transferred to your USB drive could actually still be in your computer's memory. windows has this "deferred writes" technique it uses to improve performance wherein it doesn't always write everything immediately to your external drive every time you use it. it holds the data temporarily in memory, in small chunks, to be ready to be transferred to external drive in one big write after sometime, or until you "safely remove hardware".

that's why it's not good practice to simply unplug the usb drive out, without forcing windows to write everything it holds in memory to the external drive using the "safely remove hardware" feature. it's the easiest way to lose data without you knowing it.

I completely agree with the above poster. I for one wouldn't use another program, being that I have had no issues with the Windows built in system for it, and that ensures that Windows is in fact finished writing the delayed files to the device. I've ran into many issues with my portable USB flash drive, where I would copy files, unplug it after three or four minutes, and then find out the files still had not made it onto the device for some reason or another. That's when I personally learned that you need to use some method to ensure Windows is finished with the disk. I just don't quite understand why it takes so long sometimes. Most of the time I can just copy a file and it'll be instantly copied over. Other times I can even wait a while and it will still have issues.

Thanks for this one, a quick desktop link could do a quick job instead of a couple of clicks, still, there is a safe and very quick way, just click softly and once only on the green icon and then click once again on the remove drive and that is it.

eh. isn't windowd built for plug and play? I thought that normally, when you are done transfering files, you can unplug that usb drive, and it won't lose data, I have never lost data by not stopping a USB device, actually, I never use the safely remove hardware?

But, isn't there a way to disable the plug and play, to increase performance? then, this tool would be very useful.
I can't think of another way of using it.

Depending on the preferences you set for a particular device, you can opt for quick removal or to optimize for performance. I know that sometimes when I shut my computer down and turn off the power strip prematurely that powers my external hard drives, Windows fails to write to X:\$omething. I never pull my USB sticks out while the lights are flashing (when data is being read/written), so I don't really have that problem.

I'm a bit wary of installing background programs and services. It's just more stuff that's unnecessarily eating up system resources, IMO. Not to mention that it seems redundant to install a program to do what Windows does already, albeit it may be more efficient in doing what it does.

"Safely Remove Hardware" is provided to tell windows that you're about to remove a device so that windows can finish whatever it needs to do with it -- like flushing all disk buffers, to avoiding things like potential corruption.

what if you don't tell windows to safely remove hardware? it's explained above already... it's possible to corrupt the contents of the drive. in practice that doesn't happen often, but it's possible.

some relevant pages to read:
* Surprise! You killed your USB drive
* Windows XP and Surprise Removal of Hardware
* In Windows Vista, a USB device may lose data if you right-click the device in Windows Explorer and then click Eject (affects NTFS file systems, but there is a hotfix for you ).

this download is just an alternative... if you want to stick with what windows has for you (pray it does not go missing on you ), well and good. maybe you don't find it useful to use the feature of safely removing hardware... it's just a precautionary/preventative measure anyway if you feel your data is safe.

as for plug and play, wikipedia says:

unplug and unplay for subtraction of a new device?

I completely agree with serverph the problems occur also because Windows sometimes doesn't finish writing that some process is working something on the disk writing reading and if you pull out your USB disk it might happen that all files on the USB drive might become lost. However there is also one other thing important to mention. And I am telling it from experience.

When I was writing my extended essay my friend came to me and from joke pulled out USB when I put it back it didn't contain any files. However I brought it to my friend that is using Linux system and he had some utility that could fix sector connections and reconnect all the pieces and I've got my files back. However I cannot remember now what was the name of program he used. But certainly it is useful.

I assume that to teh USB happened something similar like when you format your hard drive many data is still on it is just that all teh refernces are lost. Therfore we've got many utilities that are able to reverse this process and also those that are able to safely clean hard drives.

Well this was my two minutes

Best Regards

I really don't understand the point of this program... at least in my case. I just click on the 'safely remove hardware' button in the task bar. Its quick, and simple. For my situation I can not see a reason why I would need this program.